The state of Texas leads the nation in some college achievement categories and underperforms in others, according to a report released today by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The state did worse than average in access to college and student achievement. Texas also received mediocre grades for innovation in higher education.

As a result of the widely divergent results, Texas gets an average overall grade in the study, part of the third edition of the ICW’s Leaders & Laggards series, called “A State-by-State Report Card on Public Postsecondary Education.”

Former U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, a Houstonian, works with the Chamber on education issues.

The report measures two-year and four-year colleges in all 50 states on six criteria: Student access & success, efficiency & cost-effectiveness, meeting labor market demand, transparency & accountability, policy environment, and innovation. No state earned an ‘A’ grade in even a majority of categories, while transparency and accountability proved to be the area of greatest weakness overall.

Key findings included the startling revelation that tuition at American colleges and universities has grown at three times the rate of inflation, and without reforms, the United States will fall 7 million degrees short of meeting labor demand.

Texas ranks in the top 10 for completion rates at public four-year colleges, producing 22 completions per 100 full-time undergraduates. By contrast, at two-year colleges, Texas only produces about 12.5 credentials per 100 full-time undergraduate, ranking it 47th in the country.

“When it came to transparency and public accountability, a handful of states stood out as leaders,” the study noted. “Texas, with its comprehensive accountability system and in-depth webbased almanac of college performance, led the charge.” The study praised the state for its Higher Education Coordinating Board, which offers a set of customizable “Online Institutional Resumes” that can be tailored for use by policymakers or by would-be students and their families, noting that “too few states have launched similar initiatives.”

Texas also excelled in credit transfer and articulation – offering clear guidelines about which credits will transfer to which institutions – and cost-effectiveness. At the four-year level, Texas, along with Oregon, Virginia, and Maryland, had costs per completion and state and local funding per completion that were significantly less expensive than the national mean.

The Lone Star State received an F for openness to providers for having “one of the most restrictive regulatory environments in the country, with an extensive approval process and a sensitive regulatory trigger.”